ABSTRACT
Gender inequality is perhaps the most pervasive form of social inequalities in India. So steps to sustainable development must start with a challenge to gender inequality. As a study in rural sociology, this chapter seeks to examine the interrelationship between gender ineqality, Gram-Swaraj movement and sustainable development on the basis of case materials from a civil-societal association like Gandhi Vichar Parishad of the district of Bankura. In the concept of Gram-Swaraj, the two basic units are village and family. So Gram-Swaraj experiments are aimed at building up these village infrastuctures with concrete work programmes which ultimately could mature into self-governed, self-sustained village republics of the Gandhian concept. Gender inequality is a serious problem faced by the women of the district. ‘Gram-Swaraj’ aims at self-reliance of the villages to the extent where they, themselves, will manage to take up and continue their development programmes.
